Agile

The word in vogue within the software development fraternity is “Agile”. It simply is a different way of managing IT development teams and projects. agile manifesto is the document from which it has been derived penned by a small group of people in 2001, it describes 4 important values that are as relevant today as they were then. It says, “we value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”

The past decade has seen an ever-increasing volume of success stories, where companies have phenomenally improved the success and performance of their IT development teams and projects. Agile is now widely adopted across a variety of industries, including media and technology, large corporates, and even government.

In reality, though, agile is not the genie within the lamp solution for software development issues. The real labyrinth to get out of is to know lots of techniques from various waterfall and agile development methods, to select a combination of state of the art approaches that are most appropriate for universal situations.

In agile software projects, project management takes a detour from the usual project planning path often travelled, relying far more on the project manager’s skills in communication, facilitation, coordination -vs- planning and control.